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[Thisstorycontainsmajorspoilersfrom[ThisstorycontainsMAJORspoilersfromtheheaven Season 2 finale, “Exodus.”]
heaven He finally answered the biggest question he’s been asking all season two: Who is Alex? It turns out that Alex is an artificial intelligence. Will Alex save the world or destroy it? This is the big question heaven Writers are now asking about the success of Hulu, created by Dan Fogelman and starring Sterling K. Brown is looking forward to his third (and likely final) season, which has already been renewed.
In true heaven Fashion, the finale titled “Getting Out,” answered that looming question, but raised many others. Here are some: How exactly does Alex work? Why is Sinatra (Julian Nicholson) convinced that Dylan (aka “Link”, played by Thomas Doherty) is the adult version of her dead son? How will Xavier (Brown) save the world in season 3? Is Jane (Nicole Brydon Bloom) really dead? Did the writers know all along that Sinatra Nicholson would die at the end of Season 2?
Hollywood Reporter Ask those questions, and more, to heaven Executive producer and writer John Hoberg, who co-wrote the finale, and in the chat below, answers what he’s allowed to answer. This, thankfully, includes a simpler Alex-AI explanation of everything, including how it sums it up for the actors so their brains don’t explode thinking about it (like ours now). The series hired a quantum physics consultant and had the writers examine their theories. “It’s legitimate in theory, and it’s controversial among quantum physicists,” Hoberg says. “There are camps that believe, in theory, [that the Alex storyline] It’s very real: if a quantum computer was trying to find a way to change the outcome of where we are now.
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I spoke with actors Julian Nicholson and Thomas Doherty, who play Sinatra and Dylan, respectively, and when we started digging into the quantum physics of it all, they said that when you start thinking about it, your mind goes crazy. The deeper you dig, the more what you think you understand will dissipate. They said the writers sat down with them and answered their questions so they could understand the relationship between Alex, Sinatra, and Dylan. What explanation did you give them?
We call it the “Martini Law” in the writer’s room. There is one version of the ending where Sinatra invested all this money, hoping and convinced that this thing, Alex, would somehow mess with time. “Maybe I’m just a woman finally processing her grief. But I don’t think so,” she says in the episode. Our Martini Law is that you should be able to decide for yourself whether you think Sinatra has gone a little crazy. Is this her son or not? One thing that’s very important to us is that the show tries to stay a little bit neutral about it, while also leading [you in] direction.
I thought she was crazy, until Dylan’s reaction. When she said that, he seemed to believe her too.
Yes. Dylan was with the Professor – his own artificial intelligence that he created at the heart of this computer. We eventually find out that he was the first to put together this quantum computer with this artificial intelligence, and he was there when the scientists realized: “This thing is approaching the problem in a way we never thought about, and it’s trying to manipulate time.” This is the last he knows about what this computer did because the professor was killed and then escaped.
At the end, you see Dylan in that class talking to the professor. He stands up and asks, “Why don’t you make this thing?” He brings out what he made at home. The professor is a little nervous because he thinks it’s very dangerous. “You’re putting an AI in charge of something that’s this powerful. It could be dangerous, or it could be world-changing,” he said. And then the two of them built this thing together. So Dylan was with her from the beginning.
We know that Sinatra was financing [the project] With the professor, whom we saw in that cold, open place, and we also know that Billy [Jon Beavers]In a previous episode, she talked to the professor and said, “Sell your company,” because Sinatra wanted to buy that company and he told her it was too dangerous. Sinatra sent Billy to kill him and take over the company. So we don’t know what happened between the two times they were in that lab, and the professor was trying to say, “This is serious,” because the professor was killed shortly afterward. We don’t know what happened in between and when we finally meet Alex.
Okay, so… how could Dylan be Sinatra’s son?
Imagine this. After that, Sinatra poured all the money he could into creating what they started with: the computer bug. If you think about how fast technology moved, that’s what it did: it had endless money which gave it more and more power.
We had a quantum consultant for this offer. He is one of the heads of the quantum computing laboratories at Caltech. Sina [Haddad]who I wrote the episode with, and a few other people from the show went and spent the afternoon checking out their quantum labs. We showed up there with this idea: If a quantum computer was trying to find a way to change the outcome we would be where we are now – We said: “It sounds crazy, but…” – Is there any quantum language that makes sense in that?” “In fact, this is the prevailing quantum theory, where time is viewed differently from a quantum point of view,” he said.
Here’s how I explained it to the actors. If you think of time as a block of cheese, the way we process time is that we cut off a block of cheese as we move across it. But in this quantum theory, time actually exists all at once. So it’s like a piece of cheese that is all the time in the way of reality. But we’re in a constant state of making different decisions – like a choose-your-own-adventure book, if you get to a certain point and you can either go this way or that. In your reality, you have thousands of these choices every day. Each one, in this quantum theory, is divided into another block of cheese. So, you have this endless library of Choose Your Own Adventure books, where you could, in theory, take a page from one and put it in a different book. There was actually a speech in the lab at the beginning where the scientist used this analogy.
Well, I think I’m following…
Another way is to say that a slice of cheese from one block of cheese can slide into a different block. The theory is that this happens all the time, and we don’t know because we are in our basic reality. Things slide in and out, and we don’t seem to know the difference this It is our reality. But if something tried to manipulate that, they could discover how little the butterfly effect changes in this underlying reality that would shift things in a direction where certain things do or don’t happen. That’s what [Alex] She assigned herself to do so.
It’s a very unusual way of thinking, and we were amazed. All boards are at that end [in the bunker control room] They are parts of this type of quantum theory. Our advisor told us that if a quantum physicist looked at those paintings… [in the episode]They’ll know where we’re going in the end. We’re almost playing with a kind of multiverse idea. Maybe Sinatra is crazy, and Alex really isn’t, but she definitely feels like Dylan could be proof that this actually works.
So does this put less pressure on Xavier to “save the world” for season 3? Does the world really depend on it or does it just exist in this “choose your own adventure” version? Is the ending already written? Sinatra is very confident when she dies that she will see Dylan again.
right. Xavier says it at the end: “What makes you think I’d do this?” “If I’m right, I think you’ve already done it,” Sinatra says. “But you still have to do it.” So, will he follow through on this? What will he do? He’s left in that final shot where he’s told to “Go save the world, Xavier.” And he has no reason to. It would be like: “Why am I doing this?” What will happen? This is the big question we want to ask. Sinatra was sure enough that she was at peace as she walked through her crumbling fortified city. There is a lot to be unpacked about whether this is the truth of it all.
And we don’t know what Xavier must do to save the world. We just know that he has to get to Alex.
Yes. We know that it is under Denver Airport. There is another hideout, and that is what he was assigned to do – go there. He has to find out everything. All he knows is that he is buried somewhere deep in the earth.
Now this seems like a game Zelda.
(He laughs.) The simplest way to think about it is that it’s a choose-your-own-adventure book where you make choices in your life. If you think of an infinite library of those books, a quantum computer might try to insert pages from a different book to manipulate the ending. Because every little choice each person makes in our lives affects everything else, it’s the butterfly effect. Is Alex looking for a way to manipulate things until there is an outcome that he is tasked with solving?
Did writers and creator Dan Fogelman always know that Sinatra would be a character for two seasons? And that she had to die to get to your third season?
No, I don’t think we knew she was the one who was going to sacrifice herself. We decided while we were trying to figure this out, How do you close this door? We were kind of locked into the reality of the bunker we built and how it would work. And then we had this realization: What we wanted to do was redeem it somewhat. Whether you feel completely liberated or not, we wanted to get her to the point where she says, “I understand. She’s done some terrible things, but she believes it’s all in the service of saving the world. Some of these terrible little choices were for the greater good.”
You can argue about whether this is ethical or not, but hopefully you understand it a little more now. The fact that she has now come to terms with all of that means that she truly believes she has achieved her goal. And if we want to make it achieve its full purpose, that’s kind of its story [in the show].
Was there much discussion in the room about saying goodbye to Julian Nicholson?
Yes. She is one of the best actors any of us have ever worked with! It’s very compelling and very interesting. And again, it’s Fogelman’s show, so you never know. You may see someone from the past.
Is Jane (Nicole Brydon Bloom) really dead?
What do you think?
I think she died.
She had been stabbed, was bleeding, and died in the shower. There’s a shot at the end where there’s an empty bathroom, but it looks very dead to me. We intend her to be dead.[[Author’s Note: Bloom confirmed Jane’s death.]
The first season focused on climate change and made us think about how our interactions with the world affect our survival. This season raises questions about the possibilities or dangers of artificial intelligence, as well as about faith and what we believe in…
Will artificial intelligence save us or destroy us? Is it very dangerous? Is it manipulating things we were never meant to? One of the big themes we’re exploring here, says the professor, Do things happen for a reason or is it a coincidence? When you sum it up, it’s a bit of faith. and, Do you believe things happen because they have to happen for a greater purpose? There’s also a little bit of, Does a person deserve a second chance? Sometimes these things are part of the same question.
It seems that baby Annie will have an important role in the third season. Is there anything you can tease about this story?
This is where talking about this show is always scary [and not give away spoilers]. I think it’s really interesting that there’s a child born to a father who someone claims is moving between two realities.
If you think about where Season 2 ends, we have a mob in the middle of Colorado and Xavier is given marching orders and told that he can save the world. There will be questions about driving. There will be questions related to faith, and Are you moving forward? Where are you going? And questions, Is this dangerous? Is Sinatra dangerous? Or does it actually work to our advantage? Now they’re on the outside and all they know is that there’s a bunker somewhere under Denver. But they don’t know if it’s safe and if they want to be there.
What else can you say about where this show is heading in its third season, which you’ve all said is set to be the end of the show?
At the end of Season 1, we answered all the questions but then asked a few more. I feel like season 2 does the same thing. We’ve answered all the questions we asked, but now we’re asking a bigger question. Season 3 will follow the same pattern.
Did you find out how season 3 ends?
Yes. We feel really good about that. It’s something we’ve all been passionate about for a very long time. We didn’t necessarily do exactly what you thought in Season 2, but in some ways what you hoped would be addressed and answered. I think season 3 will feel exactly the same way. It may not be what you think or what you think, but I think it will be satisfying wherever it takes you.
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heaven It is now streaming all episodes of seasons 1 and 2 on Hulu.
